Five ACC teams in the AP Top 25: Could Virginia join the group at some point this season?

Virginia isn’t getting any preseason love from the polls, the computers, pretty much anywhere, which makes sense, given the myriad issues facing first-year coach Tony Elliott.

And yet, that schedule is so-o-o favorable.

The AP Top 25 was similar to the coaches poll, with five ACC teams in the rankings – Clemson at No. 4, joined by No. 13 NC State, No. 16 Miami, No. 17 Pitt and No. 22 Wake Forest.

The others, of course, have their own issues. Clemson was 10-3 last season, a down year down there. NC State beat Clemson early on, but didn’t end up factoring into the Atlantic race.

Miami has yet another new coach; Pitt will need a new QB1; and Wake just lost its QB1, Sam Hartman, to an undisclosed non-football medical issue, which sounds frightening.

Virginia has the league’s best returning QB, Brennan Armstrong, and the deepest wideout corps in the nation, headed by Dontavyion Wicks, Keytaon Thompson and Billy Kemp IV, with Lavel Davis Jr. returning after missing 2021 with an ACL injury.

The questions abound: the offensive line vamoosed, the defense last year was abysmal, special teams weren’t all that special.

The computers have Virginia going 6-6 or 7-5 this season, which is probably fair, on the aggregate, given the issues that Elliott and his staff have to work through.

But that schedule, whoo, boy.

ESPN’s FPI ranks it 75th nationally, and that might be generous.

The Cavaliers don’t play anybody with an FPI rating higher than theirs until October (Louisville, at home, Oct. 8), and that’s it until the four-game stretch beginning with Miami on Oct. 29 during which they don’t have to leave Grounds, except to brave Route 29 to make a run to the grocery store.

Those four games are the toughies – Miami, UNC, Pitt and then Coastal Carolina – before the regular-season finale at Virginia Tech.

Virginia will likely be favored in five or six of their opening seven before that stretch, and it wouldn’t be all that much to think that the ‘Hoos could be 7-0 going into the Miami game on Oct. 29 in Scott Stadium.

A 7-0 Virginia in 2022 would be like the 2021 Wake Forest team that started 8-0 with its most impressive win being against a Virginia team that finished 6-6 before losing three of five down the stretch, but still, you’d take it, right?

A nice, long ease into the season, the four toughest games on the schedule at home, all in a row.

This could be a fun late summer into fall.